Scholars and Descendants Uncover Hidden Legacy of Jews in Southwest

By KATHLEEN TELTSCH, Special to The New York Times

Published: November 11, 1990

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—
After several centuries, scholars are uncovering the history of Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism under threat of expulsion by Spain's monarchs in 1492 and then found refuge and obscurity in the mountains of New Mexico.

Although most of these early colonizers lived as practicing Catholics, a significant number, often called "conversos," continued to cling secretly to Jewish traditions, lighting candles on Fridays, reciting Hebrew prayers, circumcising baby boys, baking unleavened bread, keeping the Sabbath.

Researchers are now finding evidence that some nominally Christian families have handed down Jewish traditions, and have done it amid a fear-inspired secrecy that seems hardly to have lessened over five centuries.

In the past two or three years, in remote areas of the Southwest, hundreds of gravestones have been found in old Christian cemeteries with Hebrew inscriptions or Jewish symbols often combined with the cross.

Stimulated by the scholarly inquiries, or on their own, young descendants of converso families are searching to find their roots, Jewish and Christian, and comparing their findings.

A few of these descendants have returned to Judaism. Others are slowly establishing fragile ties to mainstream Jewish congregations.

"I've been here 20 years, and only in the last two or three, after observing me carefully, a handful of these people have made contact with me," said Rabbi Isaac Celnik of Congregation B'nai Israel in Albuquerque.

Some come to services, always sitting by themselves, he said. He has been invited five or six times to their homes to lead prayers, often because an elderly relative wants to renew ties to the ancient faith.

Still, distrust toward outsiders lingers. "These people lived in fear of persecution for so long, they still look over their shoulders," Rabbi Celnik said. "They are historically conditioned over centuries to be suspicious and alert." Heritage of Secrecy Is Handed Down

There are perhaps 1,500 families in New Mexico who have some cognizance of their Jewish heritage, said Frances Hernandez, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at El Paso. "They range from those with only blurred memories of Jewish customs or family legends to others who really are aware of their Judaic background and know what it means," she said. "We're talking of people who survived 200 generations of stress and secrecy, and it's a wonder anything survives."

In pursuing the conversos' saga, historians are interviewing families and using data in church records in Mexico City and New Mexico on baptisms, weddings and burials. They have also examined Spanish shipping manifests dating from the 1490's.

A few months before Columbus's voyage in 1492, Spain enacted the Edict of Expulsion, compelling Jews to leave or convert to Catholicism under threat of death. Perhaps half of the estimated 200,000 Jews in Spain began an exodus to Portugal, other European countries and North Africa. Others became "New Christians."

But even New Christians who prospered found themselves still persecuted, possibly out of envy. And some only pretended to convert. Under continuing pressure from the Inquisition, which began to be felt in Portugal as well, some of the persecuted seized opportunities to come to the New World.

When the Inquisition stretched its reach to Mexico, they fled again, crossing deserts and hostile Indian country to the frontier of what is now New Mexico. There they found a measure of safety and obscurity.

"We only have started to scrape the surface," said Dr. Stanley Hordes, co-director of a research project on the secret Jews, or "Crypto-Jews," at the University of New Mexico's Latin American Institute.

Dr. Hordes, who spoke at the recent third annual meeting of the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society, believes that converso families who fled to remote areas like New Mexico's Mora, Charma and Rio Grande valleys could have settled the first Jewish community in what is now the United States.

But other historians and Jewish scholars dispute Dr. Hordes's conclusion, saying Christian families carrying on some Jewish practices or dietary laws do not constitute a Jewish community. Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue established in New Amsterdam in 1654, is considered the first Jewish congregation in North America.

Rabbi Marc D. Angel of Shearith Israel said the remnants of Crypto-Jews in New Mexico was a tribute to the human spirit, but he questioned the claim to an early community.

"What concerns me is that because of their dramatic story with a movie-like quality, there will be an eagerness to receive them into Judaism and forget there is a formal procedure for re-entry after separation that requires instruction, patience and sincerity," he said. "There are no short-cuts." Getting to Know Distant Relatives

Dr. Hordes's own inquiry began in 1981 soon after he became New Mexico state historian. His doctoral dissertation at Tulane Univerity was about Crypto-Judaism in Mexico in the 17th century.